Sunday, October 25, 2015

Sonamarg - walking to the Thajiwas glacier

I had been to Sonamarg many years ago when I was first in India. I remember the mountains, the glacier and most of all it being very cold, even though it was summer. I was excited to return to Sonamarg to see what had changed.

Sonamarg means "meadow of gold". The Sindh (Indus) river flow through here. The place is cut off in winter because of snow, but the road is open from around April onwards. We decided to walk to the glacier, but the locals tried to persuade us it was a long way and that we would need to go on ponies - one local actually followed us for quite a while as he couldn't believe that we were going to walk. The first bit was challenging as it was quite steep, after that it got easier and it was actually a lovely walk.

We sat at the bottom of the glacier and a local man made us a drink called "qahwah" (pronounced kava). It was delicious. I was hoping he hadn't taken the water from the local stream! The clouds appeared to get quite threatening as the afternoon wore on, so we hiked back down to the village and took the car back to Srinagar.